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Counterinsurgency in the Third World: theory and practice*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 October 2009

Andrew Mack
Andrew Mack
Affiliation:
Lecturer in International Politics, Flinders University, South Australia; formerly Research Administrator at the Richardson nstitute for Conflict and Peace Research, London
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Extract

The purpose of this essay is to provide a brief overview of the theory and practice of counterinsurgency in the Third World since World War II. Given the obvious limitations of space, descriptions of particular COIN (counterinsurgency) campaigns have been avoided except to illustrate an argument. Furthermore, this essay concentrates primarily on U.S. counterinsurgency doctrines and methods. This is not to underestimate the contributions – both theoretical and practical – made by the former colonial powers in attempting to crush the impulse to national liberation in the Third World. But the European powers – with the recent exception of Portugal – had, by the beginning of the 1960s, neither the capability nor (following a number of humiliating setbacks) much enthusiasm for further military adventures in the Third World. There have, of course, been exceptions – the French in Mali, Britain in Borneo and the Anguilla affair – but these pale into insignificance when compared with the American counterinsurgency effort in the Third World, which began to gather impetus just as the major European colonial powers were abdicating their former role as Third World policemen.1

Type
Research Article
Information
Review of International Studies , Volume 1 , Issue 3 , October 1975 , pp. 226 - 253
Copyright
Copyright © British International Studies Association 1975

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References

page 209 note 1. For much of the information in this article I am indebted to Klare, Michael, whose War without End (New York, 1972)Google Scholar is an admirable and painstakingly documented study of U.S. counterinsurgency programmes.

page 209 note 1. Definition taken from Dictionary of United States Military Termsfor Joint Usage, quoted in Michael Klare, op. cit.p. 44.

page 209 note 1. Quoted in Pentagon Papers, New York Times Edition (New York, 1971), p. 432Google Scholar. McNaughton's classification of U.S. war aims in Vietnam appeared first in a policy paper dated 6 Nov. 1964 (Pentagon Papers, p. 365). A fourth aim noted in the memorandum was “to emerge from crisis without unacceptable taint from methods”.

page 209 note 2. Quoted in Klare, op. cit. p. 24.

page 209 note 1. Bibliography on Counterinsurgency (M. Leitenberg, Linda Hearne and Tom Solberg eds.) Aug. 1973, mimeo. Revised edition to be published by ABC-Clio3 Santa Barbara.

page 209 note 1. Lieuwen, Edward, The Latin American Military (Washington, 1969)Google Scholar, quoted in Klare, op. cit. p. 279.

page 209 note 2. Klare, Ibid. p. 161.

page 209 note 1. Special Operations Research Office (SORO) press release quoted in Horowitz, Irving Louis (ed.), The Rise and Fall of Project Camelot (Cambridge, Mass., 1967), p. 47Google Scholar.

page 209 note 1. Quoted in Coburn, Judith, ‘Asian Scholars and Government: the Crysanthemum and the Sword’ in Friedman, Edward and Selden, Mark (eds.) America's Asia: Dissenting Essays on Asian-American Relations (New York, 1971), p. 99Google Scholar.

page 209 note 2. Samuel P. Huntington, ‘Civil Violence and the Process of Development’ (Adelphi Paper No. 83, Dec. 1971), p. 7.

page 209 note 3. Charles Wolf Jr., Insurgency and Counter-Insurgency; New Myths and Old Realities, quoted in Klare, op. cit. p. 42. The argument in this paper (Rand P-3132, July 1965) is extended and amplified in the same author's Rebellion and Authority; Myths and Realities Reconsidered (Rand P-3422, Aug. 1966). A statistical analysis purporting to show that land distribution inequality does not contribute to insurgency was one of the main planks of the ‘revisionist’ position – see Mitchell, E. J., Inequality and Insurgency: A Statistical Study of South Vietnam (Rand P-3610, June 1967)Google Scholar. Huntington's work (see above) has also clearly been influenced by the new COIN revisionism.

page 209 note 1. Lincoln Bloomfield and Amelia Leiss, C., Controlling Small Wars (London, 1970), p. 281Google Scholar. In discussing the reasons for the relative lack of attention paid by policy-makers to social science research on counterinsurgency the authors fail to point out the asymmetry in bargaining power between social scientists hawking a ‘soft’ approach to COIN and the military who push for a ‘hard’, i.e. repressive, strategy.

page 209 note 2. Klare, op. cit. p. 124.

page 209 note 1. Investigation into the Electronic Battlefield Programme Hearings, 91st Congress, U.S. Government Printing Office, p. 67.

page 209 note 1. Sullivan, Leonard Jr, ‘Research and Development for Vietnam’, Science and Technology (Oct. 1968), pp. 35–36Google Scholar, quoted in Klare, op. cit. p. 209,

page 209 note 2. Klare, Ibid. p. 208.

page 209 note 3. Bloomfield, Lincolnet al., Political Exercise II: The US. and the USS.R. in Iran, M.I.T. Center for International Studies (Cambridge, Mass., 1960)Google Scholar.

page 209 note 1. Fitzgerald, Frances, ‘The Invisible Country’, New York Review of Books, xix, No. 6, 19 Oct. 1972, p. 25Google Scholar.

page 209 note 1. Kissinger, Henry A., ‘The Vietnam Negotiations’, Foreign Affairs, xiii, Jan. 1969, p. 214Google Scholar.

page 209 note 2. Griffiths, Samuel B., Introduction to Mao Tse Tung ami Che Guevara: Guerrilla Warfare (London, 1962), p. 10Google Scholar.

page 209 note 1. Brian Jenkins, personal communication with the author, 4 June 1975.

page 209 note 2. Halberstam, David, The Best and the Brightest (New York, 1972)Google Scholar. See also Pentagon Papers, op. cit.

page 209 note 1. Economist 30 Nov. 1974, p. 540Google Scholar.

page 209 note 2. Trinquier, P., Modern Warfare (New York, 1964)Google Scholar.

page 209 note 1. The best known works in this area, e.g. Eckstein, Harry (ed.), Internal War: Problems and Approaches (London, 1964)Google Scholar and Gurr, Ted, Why Men Rebel (Princeton, New Jersey, 1970)Google Scholar, deal with ‘internal war’ essentially as a ‘self-generating process’. Rosenau, James (ed.), International Aspects of Civil Strife (Princeton, New Jersey, 1970)Google Scholar dealt with pressures which led to intervention in internal wars but not with the impact of such wars on the intervening metropolis. Rosenau, (ed.), The Domestic Sources of Foreign Policy (New York, 1967)Google Scholar deals tangentially with conditions under which foreign policy issues may become domestic issues. Vietnam is referred to en passant but the relationship between the development of the war and its progressive impact on U.S. domestic politics is not analysed. The ‘war termination’ studies noted are exemplified by ‘How Wars End’, Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 392 (1970)Google Scholar, which also contains further references.

page 209 note 2. For a critical analysis of the ‘linkage concept’ see Mack, Andrew, ‘Why Big Nations Lose Small Wars: The Politics of Asymmetric Conflict’, World Politics, xxvii, Jan. 1975Google Scholar, and ‘Number s Are Not Enough: A Critique of External/Internal Conflict Behaviour Research’, Comparative Politics, vii (1975)Google Scholar.

page 209 note 1. The final chapter of Boserup, Anders and Mack, Andrew, War Without Weapons: Non- Violence in National Defence (London, 1974Google Scholar; New York, 1975) puts forward a synthesis of Clausewitzian and Maoist strategic theory of direct relevance to guerrilla strategy in imperialist wars.

page 209 note 2. Boserup, Anders, ‘Who is the Principal Enemy: Contradictions and Struggles in Northern Ireland’, Socialist Register (London, 1973)Google Scholar.

page 209 note 1. Kissinger, op. cit., Katzenbach, E. L. Jr., ‘Time, Space an d Will : The Politico Military Strategy of Mao Tse Tung’ in Greene, T. N. (ed.), The Guerrilla and How to Fight Him (New York, 1962)Google Scholar and Taber, Robert, The War of the Flea: A Study of Guerrilla Warfare, Theory and Practice (New York, 1965)Google Scholar. For a more detailed exposition of the arguments presented above, see Mack, ‘Why Big Nations Lose Small Wars’, op. cit.

page 209 note 2. Quoted in Klare, op. cit. p. 322.

page 209 note 1. Nixon, Richard M., U.S. Foreign Policy in the 19/os (Washington, 1970), pp. 55–56Google Scholar.

page 209 note 2. Quoted in Klare, op. cit. p. 324.

page 209 note 3. Quoted in Famsworth, Elizabeth, ‘Chile: What was the U.S. Role?’, Foreign Policy, no. 16, 1974, p. 131Google Scholar.

page 209 note 1. Huntington, op. cit. p. 5.

page 209 note 2. Gott, Richard, Guerrilla Movements in Latin America (New York, 1970)Google Scholar.

page 209 note 1. Klare, op, cit. Chs. 9 and 10.

page 209 note 2. Quoted in Mack, Andrew, ‘The Non-Strategy of Urban Guerrill a Warfare’ in Niezing, Johan (ed.), Urban Guerrilla (Rotterdam, 1974), p. 42Google Scholar.

page 209 note 1. Bernard Fall, Introduction to Trinquier, op. cit. p. xv.

page 209 note 2. Trinquier, Ibid. p. 49.

page 209 note 3. Mack, ‘The Non-Strategy of Urban Guerrilla Warfare’, op. cit. p. 43.

page 209 note 1. Kitson, Frank, Low Intensity Operations; Subversion, Insurgency and Peace-keeping (London, 1971), p. 95Google Scholar.

page 209 note 2. Amnesty International: Report on Torture (London, 1973), p. 29Google Scholar.

page 209 note 3. Ibid. p. 218c.

page 209 note 4. Ibid.

page 209 note 5. Ibid. p. 219.